


Waiting

by AFineMess101



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, I saw a screenshot of the note and I was instantly inspired and so here we are, So much angst, basically a look at Bruce and Selina's "first" and last interactions in 3b, do I understand that nothing really excuses Bruce being such a jerkwad?, if you count the note that's technically from Bruce 2.0 as an interaction, mhm but this is a look into his head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 14:29:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11625513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AFineMess101/pseuds/AFineMess101
Summary: Bruce is a little tired of always waiting on Selina.





	Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> I started a Gotham sideblog! (babybatcatandco.tumblr.com)

The knife sailed through the air, crashing through the window. Alfred raised his eyebrows, “were you aiming for the window, Master Bruce?” 

 

The deep frustration Bruce had been living with for the past few weeks started boiling in his veins, red-hot anger making him clench his fists. “You keep distracting me.”

 

“Well, you should be able to hit the target regardless, shouldn’t you?” Alfred said, and Bruce struggled to keep his composure. “I mean you had rules, about training. Rules which’d be impossible to stand by if you remain unfocused.” Alfred’s voice softened, hands folding behind his back, “now, I sense there is something… weighing, on your mind. Miss Kyle, perhaps?”

 

Selina’s name had the frustration rearing it’s ugly head again. Bruce dug his nails into his palms, “I’m not distracted because of Selina.”

 

Alfred nodded, turning his head as he reached for something in his pocket, “oh, I see, right. So it won’t trouble you to know that she dropped off a note for you in the mailbox then.” Alfred withdrew a folded piece of paper, opening it to hold in front of him. Bruce instantly recognized Selina’s long, slightly slanted script. “She asked to see you,” Alfred continued, “tomorrow.”

 

Everything in Bruce stopped dead. She wanted to see him? Before he let himself consider the implications, he remembered why he had been so angry. Slowly letting his eyes drift up from the paper to Alfred’s face, he snatched it out of the air, “no.” He crumpled it into a ball, flinging it onto a nearby coffee table only to wheel back around to face the Englishman, “Selina’s been avoiding me for weeks.” Alfred looked like he was trying to say something but Bruce stared him down, “it’s going to take more than a note to have me running.”

 

He stormed from the room, filled with a burning desire to hit something. It was utterly unfair, she didn’t get to ignore and avoid him for days on end and then drop a casual note in his mailbox. And underneath the anger and the frustration and the sadness, the root cause, he contemplated, was tiredness. He was exhausted, so exhausted, of chasing and chasing and chasing her and ending back up at square one every time. 

 

An hour later, after he’s taken out his frustration on a punching bag, he creeps back into the room. Shifting his eyes around to make sure Alfred wasn’t somehow watching him, he picks up the crumpled piece of paper, unfurling it with the sort of gentleness that was usually reserved for injured birds or live bombs. Falling to his knees in front of the table, he smoothed out the wrinkles to actually read the words. 

 

_ Hey Bruce _

_ will you come to see me next week? _

_ you remember where _

_ Selina _

 

It was utterly devoid of commas, which made sense. Selina didn’t strike him as a comma sort of person. He found himself obsessively rereading the note, tenderly tracing the words and trying to imagine Selina’s hand instead of his, pen forming the messy handwriting he had come to associate with her. He remembered his mother telling him as a child that a person’s handwriting said a lot about them, and the more he stared at the paper the more he agreed. It was a mixture of proper handwriting and print letters, and he wondered for the millionth time where she had learned to read and write. Another thing she had never shared with him. 

 

He shook his head, coming to his feet. He wasn’t going to see her. But that didn’t stop him from refolding the paper and sticking it in his pocket, the tiniest spark of hope burning in his chest.

* * *

 

He was holding on to a different kind of hope now. Hope that the strange water had been enough. Hope that Alfred, his best friend, his family, would live. Head in his hands outside the O.R, all he could think, over and over and over again was that he had killed him. He had shoved that sword straight through Alfred’s heart, watched him die. He had crossed that stark line, and crossed it by killing  _ Alfred _ . The only one who had always been behind him, the one who had held him together as he fell apart. And he had been  _ willing _ , happy to die by Bruce’s hand. He didn’t know what to do with that loyalty, that  _ love _ .

 

He raised his head at the sound of his name, Selina’s cautious face looking over at him from a few feet away. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, that she was here. She looked distinctly uncomfortable and he had to wonder what she was doing here, forcing herself to come, to act like she cared. “I heard about Alfred,” she murmured, “is he gonna be okay?”

 

He stood, turning his back on her as all of it came back to him, the self-loathing and grief and pain. He didn’t want to see her like this, didn’t want her to see him like this. He didn’t know how to explain to her what he had done, what had happened to him, and he found himself unable to look at her. “Go home, Selina,” he said, echoing her words to him in front of Sonny. 

 

“What happened?” she pressed, and he couldn’t tell her. Didn’t want to tell her, as all his frustration and the bone-deep tiredness he had grown used to living with came back in full force, and it was so easy to hate someone who wasn’t himself for a few minutes, “no. No, you don’t get to do this.”

 

“Do what?” Selina demanded.

 

“Walk back into my life!” he said, “you think I need your pity? I don’t.”

 

“That’s not why I’m here-”

 

He whipped around, cutting her off, “ _ you want to know what happened? _ ” The silence in the hallway was heavy, and he recognized that he was yelling but right now he didn’t feel like doing anything about it. He loosed a shaky breath, pressing his mouth into a line. There was no point, “you wouldn’t understand.”

 

“Why?” she challenged, “because I- I’m not desperate to believe in something?”

 

“Because you don’t believe in anyone or anything but yourself,” he bit back, anger burning in his chest.

 

She leaned away from him, face smoothing out into one without expression, “it’s called surviving. And unlike  _ you _ ,” she said coldly, “I know who I am.” Her eyes flicked up and down him, “I don’t need anyone to tell me.” 

 

As she went to leave, he started to feel more defeated than angry. This was their destiny, to come close and pull away again and he couldn’t take any more of it. His voice was exhausted as he spoke, “what are you even doing here, Selina? You don’t give a damn about Alfred and you sure as hell don’t care about me.” She turned to look at him, the expressionless look fading into a guarded one. He didn’t- couldn’t care, “I know you better than that.”

 

“Yeah,” she said thickly, “I thought you did. Have a nice life.”

 

And then she was gone, heeled boots clicking against the floor of the hallway and a fresh wave of regret curled in his gut, joining his grief over Alfred. Sitting back down, he reached into his pocket to find the folded up note he knew wasn’t from Selina now but he kept anyway. The last vestige of hope he had kept for them. He crumpled it up and walked over to a nearby garbage can, wishing he could set it on fire instead. But he let the ball of paper fall from his hand and then he was done. Done with chasing, with pining for her, with waiting for her. 

 

He was done with waiting.


End file.
